TY - JOUR N1 - © 2007 The American Physical Society IS - 5 AV - public VL - 99 Y1 - 2007/08/02/ TI - Solvent effects on charge spatial extent in DNA and implications for transfer. A1 - Mantz, YA A1 - Gervasio, FL A1 - Laino, T A1 - Parrinello, M JF - Physical Review Letters SN - 0031-9007 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.058104 ID - discovery1385031 N2 - To clarify the role played by water in facilitating long-range DNA charge transport, carefully designed, state-of-the-art, self-interaction corrected density-functional quantum mechanical and molecular mechanical (SIC-QM/MM) simulations are performed for the first time on two ionized adenine:thymine bridge models in explicit water solvent at finite temperature. For random solvent configurations, the charge is partially delocalized. However, a charge localization on different, well-separated adenines can be induced and is correlated with a restructuring of their first solvation shells. Thus, the importance of water in the mechanism of long-range charge transport is explicitly demonstrated, and the microscopic conditions for a charge localization are revealed. ER -